Monthly Archives: October 2011

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Conservative televangelist and 700 Club host Pat Robertson says that Christians should not take part on the Occupy Wall Street movement. What would Jesus do? The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.

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This is a Must See… and I have to admit, I’ve watch this clip several times today, and All I can say is… Truth, is where you find it. During an interview commercial break, Louis Farrakhan slams the Mainstream media so hard their teeth rattle. You might not agree with his politics, but surely, you can agree with his support of Occupy Wall Street and their efforts. He hits the nail on the head, and all this happens during the commercial break…lol

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The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds.
The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated “news bulletins”, which suggested to many listeners that an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a ‘sustaining show’ (it ran without commercial breaks), thus adding to the program’s quality of realism. Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic in response to the broadcast, the precise
extent of listener response has been debated. In the daysformat was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode secured Orson Welles’ fame.

Happy Halloween from Occupy Cyberspace and Reclaim America from the Lunatic Fringe!

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With the advent of the Occupy Wall Street protests, we have heard consistently about the 99% and the 1%. But which Presidential Candidates are really of the 1% and which ones fall into the 99%? The Answer May Surprise You.

Occupy Wall Street protesters have touched a nerve with their slogan, “We are the 99 percent.” It has focused attention on the ground gained by the rich even as a brutal economy has pushed the typical American family backward. Economic inequality may or may not become a central issue in the presidential race, but the candidates have at least one reason to hope it does not.

A look at the finances of those vying for the presidency shows that almost all of them rank at the very top of the country’s earners. In other words, they are the 1 percent.

The possible exceptions are Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Representative Ron Paul of Texas, whose annual household earnings may not exceed the estimated cutoff of $700,000 for the top 1 percent, and Gov. Rick Perry of Texas, who has yet to file a financial disclosure.

Buddy Roemer, the former governor of Louisiana, probably does not make the cut either, which may be one reason Mr. Roemer paid a visit to the protest encampment in Zuccotti Park in Manhattan to express his solidarity.

But Mitt Romney, whose fortune, totaling as much as a quarter of a billion dollars, dwarfs those of his rivals; Jon M. Huntsman Jr., whose father owns a global chemical company; Newt Gingrich, a successful author; Herman Cain, a businessman who reports earnings of over $1.2 million; and Rick Santorum, the former senator, who took in over $700,000 last year, are all solidly in the 1 percent, as measured by assets, income or both.

The wealth is not limited to Republicans. Though President Obama was not in the 1 percent in 2006, before his entry to presidential politics, he earned between $1.8 million and $6.8 million last year, largely from book royalties.

The gap between the candidates and the electorate is especially striking in an election season in which the economy is foremost in people’s minds and politicians are trying to demonstrate that they can feel the pain. Many people believe that those responsible for the financial crisis escaped punishment with the help of political allies.

Democrats have more or less embraced the Wall Street protesters, while Republicans have wavered between dismissing them and trying to redirect their anger from Wall Street to the White House.

The protesters are far from the only potential voters disturbed by the growing wealth divide. In a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, 69 percent of respondents said that Republican policies favored the rich. Twenty-eight percent said the same of Mr. Obama’s policies, while only 23 percent thought his policies favored the middle class. Sixty-six percent said the country’s distribution of wealth should be more even.

The wealth of the candidates exacerbates the sense that politicians are far removed from middle-class American lives. “You want to know that elected leaders understand the consequences of their political decisions,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the director of theAnnenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. “Does that candidate understand what I’m going through right now? What my family is going through? Do they know what it’s like to lose your home, to lose your job?”

Of course, presidential politics has long been a sport for the rich, and candidates need not be middle-class themselves to convince voters that they understand. Some, like Mr. Cain and Mr. Perry, may win people over with their stories of ascent from humble beginnings.

But even bootstraps are not strictly necessary. “A rich person can represent the 99 percent,” said Judy Goldstock, a retired social worker protesting in Zuccotti Park. “Look at Kennedy.”

Mr. Romney has scolded his audiences at times for “attacking people based on their success.” And Mr. Cain proclaimed, “If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself.” (Or, he later amended, blame Mr. Obama.)

The 99 percent meme has shifted the debate from the days when President Obama spoke of raising taxes on families that made more than $250,000. “Many people could see a future in which they might make $250,000,” Ms. Jamieson said. “Very few can see a future in which they would be a member of the 1 percent.”

The alienation is evident in a study of mothers who shop at Wal-Mart, where pollsters found that the women did not believe their elected officials could understand what it was like to be consumed by the price of milk, gasoline and college tuition.

“We asked, ‘If your elected officials knew about your life what would they do?’ And somebody said, ‘Cry,’ ” said Margie Omero, the founder of Momentum Analysis, a Democratic polling firm that along with Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican firm, has been tracking the women since May 2010. “They always want to know, ‘When is my bailout going to come?’ ”

In focus groups, the women discussed the satisfaction they derived from watching “Undercover Boss,” a reality show in which top executives take a turn at the bottom of the ladder in their own companies.

Membership in the 1 percent can be measured by wealth or by income. By household wealth, the cutoff point would be a projected $9 million in 2010, according to an analysis of the Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Consumer Finances by Edward Wolff, an economist at New York University. The cutoff for annual household income would be about $700,000, Mr. Wolff said. (Using Internal Revenue Service figures, which count earnings differently, the Congressional Budget Office puts the earnings cutoff at $350,000 for the 1 percent in 2007.

At Zuccotti Park, protesters described the 1 percent variously as people who “can just make money with money,” “the ones so interested in making profits that they’re willing to lay off hundreds of thousands of people a year,” and “anyone who doesn’t create a product.”

Even by the numbers, though, it is hard to tell precisely where the candidates stand. The majority have not released tax returns, and their financial disclosure forms give only a range of assets and income. Mrs. Bachmann’s income was listed at $280,000 to $840,000, and Mr. Paul’s was $360,000 to $1.1 million, which included their Congressional salaries of $174,000.

The disclosures exclude the candidates’ homes and other noninvestment property, as well as the salaries of their spouses. Most disclose income over a period longer than a year, from which The New York Times calculated annual earnings. The candidates were likelier to rank in the elite in income rather than in assets. Mr. Cain’s net worth topped out at $6.6 million, for example, and Mr. Santorum’s at $2.6 million.

Mr. Perry appears to be among the least affluent of the leading candidates. He earns $150,000 a year as governor, and his wife makes $60,000 a year at a nonprofit organization. But the couple have made money in real estate deals, including one that pushed their income above $1 million in 2007. Various news organizations have estimated the Perrys’ net worth at just over $1 million.

By SHAILA DEWAN /New York Times

A version of this article appeared in print on October 29, 2011, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: Presidential Candidates? Few Are the 99 Percent.

Austin police arrested 38 Occupy Austin protesters early Sunday morning outside of City Hall. Police said protesters refused to leave when ordered and engaged in civil disobedience. Four more arrests were made shortly before5:00 p.m. Sunday evening.

(CNN) — The arrests occurred thousands of miles apart, but the scenes were similar in Oregon and Texas early Sunday: In the dark of night, police told Occupy demonstrators to leave protest sites. Those who refused were handcuffed and arrested.

Authorities in Portland, Oregon, and Austin, Texas, say protesters were trespassing and violating city rules. Demonstrators say authorities were infringing on protesters’ rights to assemble.

Police arrested more than two dozen people who refused to leave a park in northwest Portland, Oregon, after warnings that the park closed at midnight, police said.

“This tonight was, I think, an unnecessary confrontation that we worked really hard to minimize,” he said.

Occupy Portland offered a different take.

“Six mounted police and approximately 65 police in riot gear pushed supporters to the sidewalks and conducted the arrests over a period of several hours,” the group said in a statement.

A Twitter post from the group as police entered the park said, “This is what a police state looks like.”

Police also arrested 38 people in Austin, Texas, who had set up a table with food and other items outside City Hall two days after the city issued rules saying food tables at the event must be put away between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. When the group was asked to leave the area, the 38 refused and were arrested, police said.

“A number of individuals decided to try to prevent the police from taking the food table, so they formed a ring around it. That’s when they (police) started pulling people out arresting them,” Occupy Austin member Ronnie Garza told CNN affiliate YNN.

Group members questioned the legitimacy of the city’s new guidelines, saying they were not passed by a City Council vote, YNN reported.

“These were arbitrary rules that came from City Hall which is what spurred people to resist in a non-violent way,” Garza said.

“We steam clean the plaza for health and safety reasons three times a week. The Occupy Austin members have always been very cooperative,” he said. “Tonight, it looks like a few people decided to exercise civil disobedience and have been arrested.”

Demonstrators across the country are protesting corporate greed and corruption. Many say the nation’s wealthiest 1% hold inordinate sway over the remaining 99% of the population.

Scores of protesters have been arrested nationwide during the weeks-long “Occupy” movement.

On Friday, police said 51 demonstrators in San Diego, California, were arrested for various charges, including encroachment, unlawful assembly, illegal lodging and/or some form of obstruction of officers.

Three others were arrested on similar charges in Tampa, Florida, according to a police statement.

In Atlanta, police arrested demonstrators at a downtown park overnight Tuesday. The arrests came after Mayor Kasim Reed said he sent ministers to the park “to see if we can find a way to resolve this amicably.”

In Nashville, Tennessee, authorities arrested more than two dozen protesters overnight Saturday, after they again defied a curfew imposed by the state’s governor.

Twenty-six people received citations for trespassing, while two others were cited for public intoxication, according to Tennessee public safety spokeswoman Dalya Qualls.

On Thursday, Oakland, California, Mayor Jean Quan apologized for authorities’ confrontations with demonstrators, who were tear-gassed. The clashes led to the hospitalization of an Iraq war veteran.

Marine veteran Scott Olsen suffered a skull fracture Tuesday night after allegedly being struck by a tear gas canister in Oakland, according to witnesses.

Despite recent crackdowns against demonstrators nationwide, the loosely defined “Occupy” movement does not appear to be losing steam.

In New York, where the Occupy movement was born, activists braved snow, sleet and rain Saturday during an unusually early snowstorm in the Northeast.

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The Mainstream Media is having a hard time keeping up with all the activities that the Occupy Wall Street movement are involved with on a daily basis, after all, it is a global movement. But we wanted to find out how they keep the public’s attention, and where those flashy headline come from… Well after about 15 minutes of research…. we have solved that question…Enjoy!

Tennessee Highway Patrol Troopers arrested dozens of demonstrators in the Occupy Nashville
movement peacefully just after 3 a.m. Friday and sealed off Legislative Plaza, but a judge ruled after 5 a.m. that they will be released after he ruled that demonstrators did not have enough time to comply to new permit rules. Yesterday, Tennessee changed the rules on demonstrations on the land around Legislative Plaza and the Capitol. The new Capitol rules prohibit camping and require demonstrations to have a permit, get insurance and operate from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Dr. David Suzuki endorses the Occupy Movements of The World and slams the system of corruption where “Corporate Greed” is controlling the society of all peoples of the world. Destroying humanity and our entire planet in the process. People simply must wake up and end this fools game! All groups with issues about society, the environment, health care, seniors, what have you. You are only fighting one symptom and will never will the real battle. A government which is no longer really listening, it’s their way regardless of the harm it inflicts on innocent taxpayers. They are our servants, we pay their wages / their benefits / their vacations, and we also pay for their mistakes, dearly. End this fools game, All groups come together and support the Occupy Movement in your area. Their goal is the head of the beast causing all your problems & theirs. Get the bigger picture, it’s not about you. It’s about us, all of us who breathe air. United we stand, divided we fall. Plain and simple. Stand up together and we all will win !

David Takayoshi Suzuki, CC, OBC (born March 24, 1936) is a Canadian academic, science broadcaster and environmental activist. Suzuki earned a Ph.D in zoology from the University of Chicago in 1961, and was a professor in the genetics department of the University of British Columbia from 1963 until his retirement in 2001. Since the mid-1970s, Suzuki has been known for his TV and radio series and books about nature and the environment. He is best known as host of the popular and long-running CBC Television science magazine, The Nature of Things, seen in over forty nations. He is also well known for criticizing governments for their lack of action to protect the environment.

A long time activist to reverse global climate change, Suzuki co-founded the David Suzuki Foundation in 1990, to work “to find ways for society to live in balance with the natural world that sustains us.” The Foundation’s priorities are: oceans and sustainable fishing, climate change and clean energy, sustainability, and Suzuki’s Nature Challenge. He also served as a director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association from 1982-1987.